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Rural areas present stiff challenges to the government
Pakistan's new coalition is coming to rule the country just as its rural areas face mounting economic challenges.
- By Farhan Bokhari, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:05 February 27, 2008
Pakistan's new coalition is coming to rule the country just as its rural areas face mounting economic challenges.
This is profoundly important for the country's overall well-being as almost a quarter of Pakistan's gross domestic product comes from the agricultural sector and more than two-thirds of the country's population of 165 million is concentrated in the villages.
For now, the new government appears to have inherited an unhelpful legacy. The past five years may have seen an economic recovery, but that has been largely concentrated in the country's urban areas. While key parameters such as foreign currency reserves have improved significantly, Pakistan still faces an unfulfilled agenda.
The former government working under president Pervez Musharraf has practically ignored the agricultural sector. While Pakistan's big businesses armed with plenty of money have progressed in these five years, the poorest of the country have become poorer.
The new government faces two kinds of challenges. On the one hand, it must deal with the challenge of an underperforming agricultural system where one crop after another has failed. Just in the past year, the failure of the cotton crop and the underperformance of the wheat crop had forced Pakistan to spend more on its commodity imports.
On the other hand, the rural infrastructure has broken down further under the weight of continued neglect. The neglect of sectors ranging from schools to hospitals in the farming areas has brought about much difficulties for the rural economy.
Unless these services are revitalised, the infrastructure that is responsible for lifting the quality of rural lives will just not improve. And Pakistan's destiny cannot improve without an improvement to the quality of life for the rural population.
The new government will have to work aggressively to improve incomes in the farming heartland through major innovative measures. These could include initiatives such as an overhaul of the system responsible to assist farmers with the acquisition of quality seeds and fertilisers.
Farming communities have suffered much because of the failure of the canal irrigation system to come up to their expectations. In almost all parts of Pakistan, irrigation canals regularly fail to provide adequate water to users who are located near the tail ends of irrigations canals, due to frequent breakdowns upstream.
Pakistani farmers also suffer from major challenges surrounding the ways in which banks lend out loans to farmers and the ways in which the government supports farming communities through special initiatives. In the past, there have been instances of governments offering subsidised tractors to farmers, only to find those tractors used in industries.
Similarly, money lent to borrowers for establishing daily and poultry facilities has ended up in funding business ventures. The list of what has gone wrong with Pakistan's agricultural sector is far too long to be narrated.
The solution, however, lies in a two-pronged approach. First, the government should focus on reviving rural institutions that can lead a credible developmental effort. This is vital in order to establish a framework that can oversee the beginning of change in Pakistan's rural countryside.
Secondly, it will have to put across a vital message that has so far been given little space by the previous governments. And that should be that without lifting the prospects for the rural heartland, economic reforms in big cities can not be sustained.
The writer is a journalist basedin Pakistan.
While key parameters such as foreign currency reserves have improved significantly, Pakistan still faces an unfulfilled agenda.
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